defies all laws of the universe because nothing should be this good.. even heroin gives you diarrhea. I'm new to this site but I know we all like to write essays about themes of capitalism or some stuff but I'm just here to talk about how awesome this is ... first up is the atmosphere. You are evil because you kill people and the whole game feels like it. There's an air of sinisterness throughout everything and it's perfect; especially in places like the suburb, even there feels like it's evil. Why? You're there and your evil music is playing. Jesper Kyd is a god and every time I do an action and it progresses the level and the music kicks in I go bananas! I like the new games but they feel so sanitized and they try to make 47 and the ICA to be a super spy hero to the point where it feels like the new games are made as a resume to get the James Bond IP. This has the perfect balance of feeling evil and being a silly sandbox killing game where you can dress as a bird and headbutt people. The gameplay hits that perfect balance of just passing the point of jank. Like it's very smooth and playable, and since I've been playing this game before I could talk and replaying it every day, I probably don't have much ground to stand on but it's very smooth, the controls while very contextual and somewhat controller oriented and tiny on high resolutions, work well and I never had to rebind. I actually rebound the new hitman trilogy to have the controls of this game so that's gotta say something.
Soul: 5/5
Awesomeness: 5/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

this went by really fast. its a complete breeze, yeah its a little linear and some bombable tiles blend in with the rest of them, but it's okay. Combat was snappy and cool, the animations are also really awesome (U can hold onto the ledge and aim and shoot. Tell me that isnt the most badass thing ever!! :D) The movement options are pretty fun but i never really got a hold of them lol. I also think this is the first instance of a stealth part of a non stealth game that i actually really enjoyed. Also wanted to give a shoutout to the metroids for being insane in this game. In metroid prime they're not much other than a nuisance but in this they're genuinely terrifying and intense when you fight them. More than one? omg. And then there was one part where i messed up and I had 5 on me at the same time? and I CAME OUT ALIVE!! WOOHOO!! it felt like doom eternal down there man. Yea, fun game and i am prob gonna play am2r next. cus the other options are either old or i have to go to a store and buy a 3ds game... yuck

I don't know how long it's been since a game made me feel the way I did when I was a kid. Like it was all I wanted to do, when I was outside I was thinking "oh i could be playing injustice gods among us right now." And picturing what zod combos I could think up in my head while zoning out in class. Wait actually yeah i do know how long it's been. Literally 10 years. See the injustice sentence? That game came out 10 years ago. When I was outside, hanging out with friends, exercising, doing whatever. I always think oh man i could be playing hollow knight. I lied down at night thinking oh man maybe tomorrow I could check out this area over here now that I have this ability. And I would imagine what stuff I could find there. Also perfectly captures that dark souls 1 feel while being a lot more forgiving. It's so easy to just do whatever and go in one direction and explore. There's always something there. And the movement and everything is so easy and snappy that it's not a chore at all. At first when my friend said there's DLC that triples the length of the game i'm like oh man that sounds so stretched out and long and boring. But now i'm like ... only triples??!? give me more!!! hahahaha. ohh what a day what a motherfuckin day. I can't believe I found the injustice gods among us of a new generation. I'm telling everyone about this. I'm goin back and im doin the DLC and finding every little one of those tiny collectibles. Cause this game is sick.

yesterday i was watching utube videos and i saw one about spiderman ps4. then im like damn i never played the dlc for that game, thats crazy. i should go buy and play that. Then i remembered i packed up my ps4 cause im moving. Oh thats ok, i think. Now there is a pc version. its pirating time. but then i remembered again that the pc version has the weird new peter face. so I decided to replay this instead. And I've got some stuff to say. Firstly this game kind of sucks but at the same time it is like the industry standard still 20 billion years after its come out and its crazy. Now hold on. Did I just say it sucked? maybe it does suck a little bit. The animations, the flat voice acting, glitchy combat, basic stealth, and especially the story, it's all done better in city. But like I don't care because there's nothing quite like this game. Even games to this day are still copy pasting it and failing ballstacularisly (ghost of tsushima) ((sucks))

maybe it's just the mood ive been in but replaying stuff always just helps me see the flaws more clearly. But on the other hand it also helps me to see the upsides more clearly too. Combat is awesome despite the little hiccups and the atmosphere is untouchable. The riddler's riddles are elementary for a mind like mine but thats ok some of them were pretty fun. I'm really glad I played this when I was little because if i played it now i would've said "i wish i played this game when i was little" games like lego dc supervillains, scribblenauts unmasked, gotham knights, oh man gotham knights. We have to talk about gotham knights don't we. Okay here we go. gotham knights.

Umm. I didn't play it. I did not. I know I said i pre ordered it but I lied. I lie about a lot of things. I think it's funny to lie, i think it's really the only power a person can truly have over another. If you think about it like that when you lie you just change reality for the other person. I walk up to a guy and i tell him my name is Dr Shrimp Puertorico then he will just be like "ok shrimp. my name is billy smith" and he will have no idea that the reality in his head is a fake reality. That's what gotham knights basically is. A big lie. They lied to me by telling me the game would be good. I didn't think the game would be good. I thought it would suck. And as more and more info came out, it was clear to me that it would suck. Which is terrible. I mean what videogame does everyone in the universe want? that's right. a co op arkham game. OK and they set it up after the knightfall protocol in arkham knight. this will be a good continuation of the arkhamverse. BOOM its not in the arkhamverse. Why? because that shitty pooicide squad game is in the arkham verse. Firstly fuck the suicide squad and whoever decided that was the huge new dc thing. It's not. Suicide squad is so lame. I don't want a game where i play as captain fucking boomerang trying to kill superman I WANT TO PLAY AS FUCKIGN SUPERMAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! same shit with avengers. you took the blandest, most c tier filled superhero team and just because marvel studios made one good movie now they're the big guys. newsflash pal... Xmen, fantastic 4, fuckin that little team in ultimate spiderman where they went to stop kingpin. u know the ones. spidey, daredevil, moon knight, shang chi, iron fist, dr strange. hell throw punisher in there too why not. They're all cooler than boring lame avengers. For crying out loud avengers has iron man and captain america and thor and black widow and hawkeye. the most bland and boring and lame and fucking lame and boring af guys ever and you put em together? you know whats truly screwed? the 3 actually cool avengers.. hulk, ant man, and the wasp... hulk barely is in the avengers movies and in the new ones hes like a little baby, and ant man and the wasp are like super old in the mcu. WTF? scott and hope are cool but like hank and jan r the guys u care about. whateversauce. What was i talking about? oh how lame suicide squad is. U know what was so terrible about this? they teased suicide squad in arkham origins. They did. And it was for deathstroke. he was gonna be in it. And years later we get rocksteady's suicide squad which they seem to have been forced to make at gunpoint, with a new deadshot, a new harley quinn, and superheroes that were only subtley and (masterfully) hinted at before. U know my theory? The guys who made gotham knights and the guys who made suicide squad swapped projects. Gotham knights was supposed to be a sequel to arkham knight and suicide squad was just supposed to be some co op live service avengers clone. Which it probably is already going to be. my theorem is that because that new THE suicide squad movie came out and was actually not terrible, the warner brothers dickhead investor dudes were like OMG OMFG OMG OMFG OMG WE NEED OUR A TEAM ON THIS and the devs were like umm sir the A team is working on gotham knights which is a high quality very good awesome game where you co op with the batfamily in an open world gotham and the story is good and we built off the already made batfamily movesets from the arkham series and like omg this game is a slam dunk waiting to happen and it didnt happen because why because who knows because i can't have good things because elden ring came out and was good and there can only be one good game per year and this is like some message from god that tells me i need to move on from superheroes and videogames and pay my taxes and my alimony and visit my son and apologize to my ex and stop listening to eminem and get a life. Wel screw you god i'm not doing any of that. You know what im gonna do? you can smite gotham knights into being bad but you can't smite me into somehow not liking arkham city on replay. So who's laughing now? bitch?

So there’s been a lot of controversy on the elkmane official discord server about this game. Is it good, is it bad, is it overrated, is it a masterpiece? Everyone on there’s been putting their two cents in and now it’s time for the big dog to put all the arguments to sleep. Let us begin.


As an intellectual, I love thinking. I think very often a lot about the following topics; The weather, society, politics, geopolitics, and gaming. Sometimes I think about myself too. Recently after playing resident evil 4 remake and Zelda tears of the kingdom, both critically acclaimed games that disappointed the ever living shit out of me, I thought my inner hopeful kind soul was dead. I am now a cynic jerk who wants to be a patrician contrarian so I hate popular things subconsciously to look cool online. It made me sad. I don’t like disliking things because it makes me feel left out, and unlike my usual behaviour regarding videogame acquisition I actually spent money on tears of the kingdom and I felt that it had been wasted.


Then when I played Baldur's Gate 3 I came into it with the same resignation. Sigh, I say. I will probably dislike this too. I’m too cool for mainstream popular games. I am very glad to have been wrong. You see, I’m not cynical. I didn’t dislike totk and re4r because they were popular. I disliked them because they sucked! And Baldur's Gate 3 comes along with its above average d*#k swinging all over the place showing that OMG my expectations of big video games aren’t unrealistic! Yippie! The quests are so fun, the combat asks, nay, FORCES you to vary your stratagems and strategies, with differing enemy types and cool encounter designs. And the story was engaging as SHIT. There was like actual moral dilemmas and stuff. Not just the normal formal bethesda quest things but Shakespearean, Aquinas-esque, Agambenian, foucaultian, philosophy. And like I said I LOVE thinking so I was very engaged for like 1 hundred hours.


Any random thing could be the start of a 10 hour side quest or feed into a main quest. For example (this is made up not a spoiler) you talk to some random rat in the middle of nowhere and oh boom turns out he was the final boss spying on you and now you’re in a secret dungeon no one knew existed omg wtf!! Do u remember disco elysium? This game is like that, for sure. It flew by and I played for like 11 hour sessions sometimes. I love all the companions too. Except for wyll he was kind of boring. And shadowheart because I killed her in act 1 cause she was mean to lae’zel and I wanted to impress lae’zel so she would think I’m cool and eventually have sex with me. The player choice was very good. There was some rigidity to the combat, its obviously not as free as tabletop dnd but it is pretty damn close. I never felt like I couldn’t do something storywise tho. I could do anything I wanted with the quests.


The game is so perfectly content with letting you miss entire chunks of content. (You see how I used the words content and content in the same sentence? That was a coincidence but it’s fun) It’s so confident. It insists upon itself because it knows it’s the shit. It’s like asap rocky calling himself that pretty motherfucka. Ya he can say that shit because he’s the most gorgeous man to exist and baldur's gate 3 can let u just walk past a 5 hour dungeon because it has 7 contingency plans in place for players that didn’t do that dungeon. I said bg3 is the asap rocky of games but it’s also the Batman of games. Probably the best case for early access ever…? Up with ultrakill and hades.


now for the bad parts of the game i don't like….



The final act is less polished than the rest of the game and it has way too many encounters with large groups of enemies where it just takes forever and ever. Sometimes they just stand still for their whole turn. TBF it's a lot faster than other crpgs, but i don't wanna see anyone complain about fallout 1 combat if they're sucking off this game. I’m not trying to diss bg3 im saying theyre the same and fallout 1 haters are dumbfucks and wrong

The jump pathfinding is broken dog crap. I jump across a gap, right? And two of my companions follow, one of them stays stuck there. Ok no problem i’ll switch control to the straggler, you know what the outcome’ll be. I’m batting a thousand it got to the point that these companions don’t even like travelling with me. The second I switch control to the straggler, everyone else jumps to the straggler. It’s a frustrating carousel and a whole ordeal everytime. Sometimes I don’t notice and go into a battle with 1 guy missing. It sucks. I think that’s it.

The end. man this review kinda sucks eh? but watevs i do reviews in one take i'm not editing anything. I've fallen off so hard, i'll never make anything as insightful and entertaining as my review for breaking bad criminal elements

I thought my Metroid marathon was done but I saw this in the store for 10 dollars and I remembered I had a 3ds and that can play ds games. So I got it and physically played it on a physical 3ds which was really cute of me to do that. Every aspect of this little demo thing is cute + precious. The controls are giga fucked tho. U can move with the stick or the d pad or XYAB for some reason, shoot with the bumpers, and move your camera by dragging ur finger across the bottom half of ur ds. to jump u tap ur finger on the bottom half of ur ds twice and to change to missiles u press a button on there, to change to morph ball bla bla u get the idea. There’s not much to do here but i had fun for like 5 mins. Worth 10 dollars and digging out my 3ds for? Absolutely fucking not. But tbh I feel I’ve been overlooking the 3ds. It’s more portable than the switch and i can comfortably take it on the bus with me and not get robbed. I’ll play Samus returns I guess. I did see it at the store and it was still $60 tho so… yea u understand why I haven’t really ever been much of a Nintendo fella. Even tho I’m replaying mgs4, my Metroid marathon will continue to march forth. I’m still not gonna play other m though.

From the first minutes of the game I could already understand why this one was everyone’s favourite. Palpable atmosphere, and I finally got the people complaining about zero mission and am2r missing that “isolating, lonely, cold” atmosphere of the originals. This is what they were talking about. It's a pretty substantial tone shift, from the station to going back to Zebes. Everything is darker, more terrifying, lonely, and hopeless. Almost like Peace Walker to Ground Zeroes, raiders to temple of doom, or high school to university. It adds so much to the depowering at the beginning of the game, and the contrast to eventually tearing shit up everywhere feels like such a cool progression. You become more comfortable and less scared, and now you're back on your grind!! The main path is more like a corn maze where all the dead ends had corn for you to eat. I never felt like going off the beaten path just got me random power bomb increases, they could be whole ass optional upgrades. It's nice knowing that no matter how much I cheese out the order, I will never get softlocked. I always think I am, but super metroid has me covered. I eventually learned to leave it all to god's plan and explore without worry. The bosses were so cinematic too, seeming so well balanced that I was always reasonably challenged no matter how much e tanks or super missiles I got. I also wanna talk about the dash in this game, and how much I cheesed with it. The dash, the wall jump, the space jump, I did stuff out of order and I LIKED IT. The charge beam was the last upgrade I got because FUCK YOU THAT'S WHY!!!!!! and tell me how the ending made me emotional despite the fact that no one in this series has spoken a word? I love this game a lot, I'm giving it 5 stars, and I'm gonna play metroid fusion next.

Pretty great game, I like the hand holding physics (take notes dead rising) and the animations. The music was nice too. Give it a try.
…
April fools! What did you really think I, the great one and only elkmane would have just one sentence as my final review before my retirement? No. I’m gonna give a nice good long review.

Ico is a really nice game. It's a video game stripped down to its bare essentials and then stripped down even more. Theres no health bar or weapon switching or hud or prompts or any tutorial of any kind. Which is pretty cool and can lead to moments of discovery in puzzles which are really fun, like when i found out i could swing on chains or something. The puzzles in this game are so simple but can be so much fun. They often span a whole room or multiple, and mix cool platforming in and it always left me wanting to play more.

I did something new while playing this game. You see, the PS3 doesn't have a headphone jack on its controller, and I live in a house with other people who can't rly be quiet. Why don't i get a house for myself? because I live in ontario! FUCK YOU DOUG FORD! FUCK YOU WITH THE FREEST OF SPEECH THIS DIVIDED STATES OF EMBARRASSMENT WILL ALLOW ME TO HAVE! FUCK YOU AND THIS DEMOCRACY OF HYPOCRISY! Anyways, I decided every morning I was free to get up super early in the morning like 5 or 5:30 to play Ico. It was usually dark when I started but the sun rose through my window on the side and it was completely silent aside from the birds chirping both ingame and irl and it was a fun experience. Don't worry about me tho, i'm used to waking up at 5 to commute to uni. THANKS AGAIN DOUG FORD... FUCKING IDIOT. Anyways, the 5am complete silence helped me think a lot about what feelings this game was trying to give me. And I do feel it. It hit me when I, Ico, was trying to solve this puzzle by climbing up on this structure. Yorda was looking off into the ocean and occasionally glancing back at me to see how I was doing (yorda is the girl u escort around.) And I think I understood. This game is trying to recapture the greatest years of our lives, that being grade 3. And maybe 4 if you were lucky and privileged. Because there's such peace in meeting someone within 3 years of your age at a playground and not knowing how to speak the same language but still playing together. Hey let me show you something cool on top of this tree. You wait down there. I don't know, it was really evocative of that time for me. Like the time I was at the park at 9pm and met some guy from my class I never spoke to and we talked about owls while sitting on a tree and he told me owls are spies for demons and I believed him. This has nothing to do with the game, i'm rambling... sorry.. in my old age i've gotten sentimental for the happier days back before doug ford was premier. Maybe its good im retiring after this. im losing my marbles. Let me get back on track. Basically, this game is like meeting a new friend and helping her escape from her evil mom who wants her to stay inside and practice piano or multiplication tables.

the environments were all also great. If you liked undead parish/burg this is that but for like the whole game. Gorgeous visuals and the camera placements make this a very unique looking game. No prop or interactable item has any kind of glow or yellow paint marking that its usable or anything like that. Boxes are boxes, chains are chains, ropes are ropes, ladders are ladders, it has no regard for readability except for the fact that there is so little detail in the environment (which adds to its isolating abandoned castle atmosphere) that it really doesn't feel like a hassle or like there was something that shouldve been interactable. It's cool. The camera placement also highlights where you should go. Stepping onto a ledge brings the bottom tip of a chain into your view, prompting you to move the camera and investigate the room further. Now i'm gonna talk about the combat.

The combat is okay I guess, it's interesting and a fun idea to have the playable character be under no threat at all and have yords (me and yorda are on nickname basis) be the target. Theyll try and knock you away, but theyre going for her. Like ashley in re4 kind of. But it's more like ashley in re4 remake. The problem is theyre kind of slippery and can fly- and you have no air attacks. So, lets say I attack and they fly up. I repeat this like 20 minutes. But- if they grab yords then they stay still for a few seconds which lets you hit them as much as you like til they die. It's like re4 remake because ashley gets kidnapped 10x more in that game than she does in re4, and once she IS kidnapped then the ganado or whatever holding her is open to a stealth attack which is a one hit KO. So in that game, I didn't really mind her getting taken five times a fight because it was kind of beneficial to me. Double edged sword though. On one hand, its a way for your sidekick to be useful in their uselessness, but on the other hand it makes the times they DO get taken way less stressful. Honestly I think I would've preferred if they were just less slippery and didn't fly all the time.

I think thats pretty much all i have to say. The review is over now, so newcomers please feel free to drop your like and be on your way. My following message is for my loyal elksters regarding my retirement from backloggd.

Hey buddies. How's everyone doing? okay? i hope so. I know I'm addressing a crowd of hundreds, but honestly you're all my sons and daughters and children to me. All of you are appreciated by me equally. But I have to go now. Why? well, it's because I had a dream. What was my dream? well, I'll tell you now. I had put my copy of breath of the wild on sale in kijiji. What's kijiji? oh kiddo its like canadian craigslist. I wanted to sell my copy of breath of the wild or trade it for a copy of bayonetta 2. I did this in real life, so its interesting that it carried over in my dream. Anyways, I recieved a message (in my dream) saying they would trade me a copy of starbound for botw. I said no, considering starbound is worth like 15 dollars and I was selling botw for 45. The guy didn't like that. Not one bit. He took to backloggd and he posted something. He somehow managed to find every bad thing I've said on the internet, every weird search i've ever made, every guy i've yelled at on rainbow 6 voice chat. My elksters know I have a dark past. The comments were my beloved elksters; all of them felt so betrayed. Comments like "i cant believe elkmane would do this to us." "i can't support him anymore" "he was my idol." I tried to go back and give him my game, hoping for him to take it down but he didn't budge. It was over. My fans hated me. And that dream made it known to me that i can't be elkmane anymore. It's too much. This role isn't something i can mentally handle. The past 6 presidents of the united states have all gone on record as to saying that their job is 2nd hardest in the world right before being elkmane. And they're right. It is tough. So i've decided to hang up my elk hat and retire. And I know some shit's so hard to swallow, but I just can't sit back and wallow in my own sorrow but I know one fact: I'll be one tough act to follow. One tough act to follow. I'll be one tough act to follow. Here today, gone tomorrow - M.M

Here is my goodbye song!

wait, no. sorry. wrong one.

THIS is my goodbye song.

ive played a lot of this but never really went and did every campaign solo, so that's what I did today. All the campaigns back to back without stopping, took me about 7 or so hours and man valve really just makes perfect games don't they? This game had gore that would not be matched until doom eternal, and even then this game's insane animations make it look timeless. Guns still feel great, and the special infected's are cool too. Do you have any problems with the game? literally just mod it out. Or mod something in. It's ridiculous how easy it is to mod this game and how many mods there are. Valve is so far ahead of the universe that they had creation club before creation club and without taking money... you just downloaded the mod. Straight from the game. Anyways, let's talk about the real reason why this game is so awesomesaucitacular. The characters are really funny. One of my favourite aspects of zombie apocalypses with the exception of killing zombies is how a group of people who never would have met or even interacted now have to work closely and help keep each other alive for their own safety, even if they cant stand each other they gotta work together or else they all die. Its very sweet and hearing ellis and nick argue is really funny and I like it. I wonder why this game isn't included in best game of all time conversations like with half life and portal. I personally prefer this game to the portals, but hey to each their own maybe being a co op zombie game disqualifies you from art status because umm idk. Watever everyone already likes this game whats there to say

ok. so. I've been on a streak of these story games after realizing with telltale walking dead that sometimes games without shotguns can be awesome. It did sort of have this barrier of the whole setting being .. medieval times in some buttfuck country I never heard of set dozens of years before I was even born. Medieval times is a pretty boring setting. If you ask me, the only three settings I will accept are modern day, zombie apocalypse, or the cold war. Games CANNOT be set in the future because they will be outdated when we get to the time the game alleges it's set in. It also cannot be set in space because there's no sound in space so I have to turn off my volume every time for full immersion and its so lame. My most important rule is games cannot be set in medieval times because I don't want motherfuckers saying "thy, thee, thine, thou, wasn't, shakespeare," and other medieval words. Also I can't help but think it just really smells bad there.

But you know what, I gave this one a try. And I'm glad I did because despite the boring, lame setting and naming all these old monks from like 1500 in conversation as if I'm supposed to know who they are, I found peace within the world through the protagonist, Andy. You see, Andy is a visitor and an artist. You play as him and choose what he says. What I did was I self inserted as him and I thought I was him. So when people said "oh yeah saint reactine from the denzel mountains said pablo neruda and max brooks of loeb city went to the pottage shop to eat pottage" (authors note: pottage is like beans sort of ) both me and Andy can nod our heads and pretend to know wtf is going on.

You see I'm a big fan of games that make me feel smart without having to be smart or do anything. There are no real puzzles in this game or any way to fail, it's completely linear and no matter what you do you win. But it makes me feel smart because I didn't know it was impossible to lose. So when I kept winning, I felt sooo really sodding smart. (Authors note: sodding is ancient slang for fucking) Andy quickly became one of my favourite characters in recent memory because of how relatable he is not just in his fish outta water attitude in the town, but his personal arc also really resonated with me. Anyone can relate honestly. The game says a lot about passions and goals love and people and building on the past and the economy's relation with art and the passage of time and faith and a whole lotta fancy pants college degree bullcrap but I won't get into that because I want YOU to get into it.

Yeah you play the game yourself and comprehend the themes and subtext and stuff. That's gonna be real fun for you. The side characters are also super fleshed out and seeing these guys change over the course of the game was amazing and I was really really invested, which is surprising especially for such a short -ish game, I have to admit its very hard to get me to care for a whole town of people but I did even if sometimes I couldn't pronounce their medieval ass names. There's a whole lot of them and it normally would be easy for them to feel really similar visually and personality wise considering there's no voice acting but the art style is so outta this world that not only does everything look smooth and the animations feel real and sick and awesome, but each npc has their own look and style where you from a glance can almost tell what they're like just from their face and what they're doing and their posture or whatever. I had some complicated ass relationships with these townspeople. And I think that's really awesome.

One thing I did think was sort of underdeveloped was the actual quest design and time passage mechanics. Your quests are always very similar, go here and ask this person about this. Like I get it there's no funny business its a straight up realistic medieval times thing, and there are some exceptions where the quest can be action packed... But yeah it can get boring to make a break in the case and my next goal is to talk to these three people about this topic and gather info, which I guess is the point since you're solving a murder mystery but, whatever. Aside from the variety I just wish the actual stuff was more robust and clear. Like ok this quest tells me to talk to this guy. I go to the guy. He gives me a "wassup Andy" and I can't respond. Is the quest broken? did I come at the wrong time? who knows. The in game journal ain't tellin me jack squat. I also thought the pacing could be off at some times, some chapters felt very long and some felt like they were over in a second. But if those tiny ass baby ass complaints are all I got then I don't see why I can't bestow upon this game one of elk's highest honours, the coveted, the exclusive, the cool and badass 5/5. Yeah. Hell yeah.

good night!

EDIT: Josh sawyer blocked me on twitter so im dropping my rating of this game. Thanks for understanding.

Every young gamer had one dream. Just one. A co-op arkham game starring the batfamily, completely playable front to back in seamless multiplayer. Nothing ever really scratched the itch. Justice league heroes, no. DC universe online, no. Batman Arkham Origins multiplayer? … yes, but you had to pray to Jesus and God combined that you and your bro would get to play as Batman and robin. But when you did there was NOTHING I repeat NOTHING even 1% as fun in any videogame ever programmed.

In arkham origins multiplayer, two people would be batman and robin while the rest of the players would be standard goons fighting each other in a gang war on behalf of i think bane and joker. But you could be rushing to the frontlines to get more kills, and suddenly there’d be a shadow flying overhead. Instinctually, you shoot the sky where you saw it. You feel the paranoia. Your buddies are dropping like apples from a tree. And here come the fruit bats. You try to focus on shooting some clown henchmen as you’re suddenly and silently taken down… fuck. You finally understand the henchmen. But I don't wanna be a henchman. Did you go out to recess and pretend to be a henchman on patrol? No. You pretended to be batman, and nightwing, and batgirl, and red hood, and robin, and batwoman, and orphan, and spoiler, and the question, and the signal. EVERYONE wanted to be the signal. But as we grew older and playing outside became cringe, we were forced to play as henchmen and then as no one… when arkham origins online went offline.

Fade to black.

CUT TO: INT. DC Fandome. 2020.

Elkmane: Oh man! I can’t wait to play that game!

Elkmane’s friend: Me too

Elkmane: I hope it’s basically batman arkham knight but multiplayer

Elkmane’s friend: Me too

Note their unearned optimism. Their complete disregard for genie’s law. If something is your wish, it will be granted to you in the most twisted, dramatically ironic way possible. You’ll get your co op batfamily game alright. But first of all, it won’t be in the arkham universe. SECOND of all, batman will be dead.

Elkmane: But how? Batman ‘died’ in arkham knight. Why would you make a second universe just to use the same setup?

Shut up! Third of all, it’s gonna control terribly. It’s gonna be designed for controllers. Keyboard will make it weird for grappling and fine movement.

Elkmane: Why the fuck would I use a controller?

Exactly. Fourth of all, the customization will be fucking strange. Your armour will be one outfit, you can customize certain parts of it and the colour but if you have one style you like you’re gonna have to hope to find a high level version of it.

Elkmane’s friend: Can we at least get a transmog system?

Yes.

Elkmane’s friend: Oh thank god!

BUT it’s gonna be completely uncostomizable and each suit style will have the absolute ugliest colours and detail choices possible.

Elkmane: Whatever, i’ll just use the basic comic accurate suit. You at least have THAT, right?

Sure!

Elkmane’s friend: Aw yeah!

Just gotta pay 30 dollars for the DLC pack.

Elkmane: Whatever man! I don’t care! I don’t care if I look cool, I don’t care if the game is fun, I don’t care if it’s the most repetitive pile of dogshit in the world! Just let me enjoy this as a co-op game where the bat family can play off each other.

I mean, okay? I guess you can have two guys together during open world and the missions. But I’m gonna make it so that only the host shows up in the cutscenes, only the host can open doors, only the host can start missions, only the host can-

Elkmane’s friend: Wait wait wait, what? Only one person shows up in cutscenes?

Yeah

Elkmane: I thought this was a co-op game?

It is. The non-host just pops in after the cutscene ends. Ok i’m gonna end this script bit now. Every single turn I took in this game baffled me. Firstly, the structure. It isn’t like arkham or even other open world games. It operates on a strict nightly basis. Which is actually really cool. There’s only a set amount of crime that happens every night, it wont just infinitely repeat like spiderman or whatever. And it creates a unique loop where you go on “patrol” for the night. We’ve all had fantasies of going on patrol with others, just doing acrobatics across rooftops, sitting on the sides, having deep conversations while waiting for crime to happen. But when you’re out on this patrol, you can’t switch your weapons to anything that you find. You can craft as much as you like, mind you, but you can’t switch them out. So if you have an underleveled weapon, and you loot a high level one, you won’t be able to change. You can change your style. You can’t change into stuff you craft. It’s so, so, so needlessly odd. And I wanna expand on the transmog system. It completely defeats the point of having a transmog system. The only style I like for red hood is the style called year one. It’s basically a bog standard comic accurate red hood suit with the mask and the brown jacket and the black shirt and the red logo. I did not unlock the transmog for it. Even if I DID, it would have a black jacket and a brown shirt (???) so I just used this level 18 armour to when I was level 30 because I wanted to look cool and the game was really easy. There’s a red robin transmog for robin, but the colours are all wrong. Okay. Whatever, who cares about this miniscule clothing miscrap? How about the open world activities? The crimes?

Well, crimes all happen in set locations. Every time. Just different factions occupy them. The observatory always has a criminal stronghold, this park structure always has an organ harvesting thing, yada yada etc. It gets VERY old and repetitive, but for some odd reason me and my friend continued to do every single available crime every night. No clue why. It wasn’t fun. The combat isn’t really fun. The stealth is godawful. The stealth makes the combat look like sekiro. “Don’t treat it like arkham” they say. Why not? It’s just a much worse version. I’m willing to overlook so much, but the stealth layouts and combat design are so awful and your blueprint was RIGHT THERE. I would’ve been fine if they tried something new and missed. They just made a much blander version of arkham. The counters that kept the momentum going are replaced with easy as shit dodges to super telegraphed attacks. Combos are not emphasised, you should just pick an element and put all the weapon mods you want to make it build faster and hit them until the electric meter or ice meter or poison meter or fire meter gets full and they take big non lethal fire damage. Honestly, all the characters play the same mostly. They have different cooldown abilities which I forget exist half the time. That seems to be where they put their money on. The abilities, the skill trees that do shit like “10% more chance for a critical hit” or “7% increase of defense when your health is 60% or higher” like, ok man. In Arkham Asylum I can spray paint a wall with a bat symbol and wait for someone to walk by and then explode them. I can’t do that here. Arkham asylum came out in 1989.

I do wanna be a little easy on them tho. There is no chance in hell anyone is touching the arkham games. Those were lightning in a bottle. I have to keep reminding myself to be grateful that I exist at the same time as those games and can replay them whenever I want. Genuine marvels in every single way. Sure, there’s games like that everywhere now. But c’mon. I love insomniac spider-man as much as the next guy but none of those are EVER touching an arkham game. I don’t think anything ever will.

And to their credit, they got the batfamily dynamic and writing down. The story is pretty lame and the court of owls plotline is like, completely wasted, but when the batkids and alfred were talking and hanging out was pretty great. Each character has a personal quest, where they do their own little journey that isn’t really about fighting but about a little something called character development and emotions and love. Babs’s was my fav. The quest touches on a big theme of the game, succession. A lot of staple bat-things aren’t here anymore. No batcave, no batmobile, no batman, no commissioner gordon, no leslie thompkins. But we have to make room for the new guard. It also hits really hard during the current conversation around characters like spider-man, who seem to be stuck in a rut and not allowed to develop or grow past 23. The villains are ancient societies trying to cling to the past and extend their lives. This game has fun ideas, especially how unlike most batman adaptations it’s not afraid of the supernatural and goofy end of the comic world. Jason has magic lazarus jumps. Yes. He’s a superhero. Ok? He can do that. He came back to life with magic lazarus juice and now he has magic lazarus jump. It’s sweet. That’s why it’s such a shame you and your friend’s character couldn’t interact in cutscenes during missions. That’s my #1 absolute biggest complaint. I mean, okay, you’re saving resources or whatever. But how many combinations are there between 4 characters? How much dialogue does the partner character need? Host could have all the lines, at LEAST have the other guy in the background, completely mute. I felt bad for my friend. Sometimes we got different cutscenes with our own characters in it and we had to tell each other what our character said. It's so, so weird. It’s not like they skimped out on the amount of lines. My friend was AFK once while we were in the belfry, and there was CONSTANT conversation about the cases we were taking during our place in the game. It was so natural. It was like an unscripted discussion between two dudes talking about the game and what they should do next (albeit taking it a little seriously). And I only saw it because my friend was urinating. They put that there so it wouldn’t feel hollow when you were just chilling out in there. There’s so much effort put in certain parts of this game and absolutely none in others.


For example, this is a looter game. You get loot from chests and enemy drops. But there wasn’t any point I wasn’t able to craft every single blueprint I had. I always had up to date gear, I just had to go to the belfry and craft and equip the new stuff. The armour mods make it so low level stuff can still work higher levels if you want it to. So why even make it a looter if the looting mechanics are so … automated? I don’t even know what word to use to describe it. It’s like, if I wasn’t told that there were all these crafting materials I wouldn’t even know. I would just see the crafting menu as the stuff I unlocked. It’s so oddly designed. But on the other hand there’s awesome stuff, like the side quests. Clayface, Harley, and Mr Freeze. You have to investigate their shit in the open world and do these scripted quests that are like DCUO on duty missions and these scripted segments were a lot better than most of the rest of the game. Chasing Clayface through the streets as he sticks onto passing trucks, or multitasking through Harley’s crazy ass panic inducing games, it’s just so AWESOME sometimes. That’s why although it seems like i’m ripping this game apart, I just can’t say I didn’t like it.

At the end of the day, when I see two enemies and I say to my bro I’ll take the one on the left, and we both do synchronized stealth takedowns, do you really think you’ll be worried about all the other shit? All's right with the world. Everything is gonna be okay.

Elkmane’s friend: You can say that again.

Elkmane: I hope you elksters enjoyed the review. I may be retiring soon, so enjoy it while you can.

This game’s music and style is #awesome. I know it was supposed to be green but my emulator played it in black and white and the screen is super zoomed in, you can’t see 3 feet in front of you and the soundtrack is just these harsh noises and beeps and screeches, there’s rooms and dark hallways with no enemies and it gets more and more frequent the more you progress and the deeper into the planet you go. I feel so unwelcome, tense, out of my depth, and on edge. Super cool af.

I hear a lot about how metroid 1’s abrasive and alien design was lost in future games and while I do like the thought of duplicate rooms, death traps, and in general just map design that is meant to trip the player up and fuck with them, (See tricks and traps from doom 2; one of the greatest videogame levels of all time.) that wasn’t what stopped me from wanting to finish metroid 1. It was just unfun to control. Moving around sucked, shooting sucked, the health economy sucked unless you were willing to grind those bug ejecting tubes for like 10 minutes, and it was huge so if you got lost (no map) you were LOST for real. This game is genuinely fun to control, the movement as well as the combat is smooth and is up to modern standards. The game is much more linear so the lack of a map isn’t as big of a deal (though, not having any colour made it hard to mentally isolate where it was you needed to be. As well as remembering all these BS normal ass blocks that you can crawl thru.) ((double also, i’m probably a little advantaged on this front cause i played AM2R))

I do feel the metroid fights themselves got old really quick and despite the mutations my strategy of just tanking it all and spamming missiles never changed. It was like the same fight but reskinned and they gradually got more and more bullet spongey. And also there wasn’t enough health recharges in the later stages cause there were so little enemies to regain hp from. I had to backtrack just for hp. Later I looked it up (AFTER I FINISHED!!) and it turns out yea that was the closest one lol

I think this game is worth playing and I had fun. At least give this one a fair try.